Skystream

After working closely with the co-founders of Skystream Corp., Rob Robinett and Regis Gratacap, on the Loral ODBS project, I decided to accept their invitation to become a member of the Skystream Technical Advisory Board. I later joined Skystream as an employee, to work as a network architect on a number of issues of mutual interest such as multi-transponder DVB MPE issues, DRM/CAS issues, and DVB Turbo & S2 coding, and to assist Skystream clients such as Europe Online, which operated on four transponders on the Astra satellites in Europe.

Rob and I also had a number of skunk projects relating to analysis of DVB performance, and I built a monitoring station with a small antenna farm at my house in Brest, France so we could capture DVB streams in Europe from any of the major operators. The system shown below had four DVB receivers and antennas, and passed the data collected back to Mountain View, CA., where it was processed and plotted on a web page.

By 2002, Rob had left the Skystream to start Modulus Video (an MPEG-4/AVC encoder company later sold to Motorola), and Skystream was concentrating on cable headends, and the hopes of an IPO had finally faded.